National polls are mostly meaningless for the next few weeks, but this one may be surprisingly noteworthy:

Barack Obama has been declared winner of the 2008 bobble head election, held by sports consulting firm The Goldklang Group in six minor league baseball stadiums this month.

Obama defeated John McCain 55 percent to 45 percent, as minor league fans cast ballots at voting booths inside the six stadiums. Each fan received a bobblehead doll of his/her candidate. Voting stopped and a winner was proclaimed when one candidate’s bobblehead supply ran out.

It sounds silly, as anything involving bobble heads does, but there are a couple of factors here to consider. First, the demographics of fans of minor league baseball are much closer to NASCAR dads and Sam’s Club shoppers than, say, aficionados of chardonnay and arugula, which bodes well for Barack Obama, whom Republicans are trying to brand as uppity, oops, sorry, elitist, because his base includes educated, upper-income wine drinkers who prefer salad made with greens that are more flavorful than iceberg.

In addition, Obama swept McCain at ball games even in generally Republican areas like South Carolina, Florida and South Dakota, as well as in the Democratic strongholds of Massachusetts and New York. In St. Paul, Minn., site of the Republican National Convention next month, Obama trounced McCain by 58 percent to 42 percent.

Another factor to consider is that, in August 2004, the same bobblehead poll accurately predicted the George Bush would narrowly defeat John Kerry.

Of course, there’s one factor that may undermine the accuracy of the poll: It’s unclear how many of the bobblehead voters are under the age of 18 and thus ineligible to vote in the real election in November.